Since they are dealing with it now, it takes away some of the focus of winning and beating the Carolina Panthers. Without a Wednesday game-planning meeting, and going through practice with all the adjustments and working on first and second down, you're missing a huge part of the game plan, and now four players are behind.

I think coach Belichick feels like the message is more important at this point, even if that message benefits the team at another time. If it's snowing next year, players will remember what coach Belichick did about it.

Mike: The Panthers' offensive coordinator is Jeff Davidson, who coached with the Patriots from 1997 to 2004. Do you think it is looking too deep into the matchup to say that will be a factor?

Tedy: Jeff was the tight ends coach here, and I always thought he was a smart guy. So now you're coming into another game where the opposing offensive coordinator has a history with the Patriots. We all know what happened when Josh McDaniels came up with things that were extremely difficult to adjust to, so now we'll see if Jeff Davidson is that creative.